Multimedia

Ubuntu is very rich when it comes to playing multimedia formats like Videos ,Music ,Photo Editing,Video Editing etc .The default Music player for Ubuntu is Rhythmbox Music player for playing Videos the default is Movie Player .. But You would find some other cool Multimedia programs like Banshee,Amarok,VLC etc.

Multimedia Codecs

But before i start introducing some of the cool multimedia tools available for the Ubuntu Linux Desktop lets start by first installing important codecs that would make it possible to play many of the popular Multimedia formats on our Linux box. ( Ubuntu Ships with only free and open source software. hence some popular formats like mp3,avi,mp4 wont work out of the box. because their are not free and open source format. but you are allowed to always install the codecs to play these extra formats.)

In other to make the process easy and because we would be installing a large number of packages its better to use the commandline. dont worry all you have to do is open terminal (Application/Accessories,Terminal) and copy and paste the commands enter and wait till you are returned to your prompt.

First we enable the Medibuntu Repositories because its contains some important codecs which we would need to play DVDs

Now we have all the Codecs we would need to play most popular medias on Your Ubuntu.

Let me give you a brife introduction to some of the cool Multimedia Tools available on the Linux Desktop

Music Player.

They are like a bigilion of Music players for linux all have their plus and minuses. By default Ubuntu comes with Rhythmbox which is a very simple and stable music player.There is also Amarok which is the must feature filled music player in the world but its not known for its stability. Personally i prefer Banshee so that is what i will talk about

– Banshee

Banshee has been under the shadow of amarok and Rhythmbox for a long time. not anymore. ever since the project went 1.x its been redesigned and in my opinion the best music player there is now for linux. here are some of its features.

* Video Support Video
All the power of Banshee, now for your videos

* Device Support Device Support
Sync your music and videos to your G1, iPod, or other device

* Podcast Support Podcast Support
Download or stream podcasts and video podcasts

* Last.fm Streaming Radio Last.fm Streaming Radio
Listen to favorites and discover new music with free, streaming music from Last.fm

* Play Queue Play QueueNew!
Queue up songs, videos, and podcasts on the fly

There are also quite a handful of Video players available for linux. by default ubuntu ships with Totem. which is cool and gets the job done. but i prefer VLC which is a no nonsense video player that just about plays any file i throw at it.

I don’t do much audio editing. just the basic editing to allow me get by. fortunately most average Desktop users are like me. There are quite a large number of tools that can me used for audio editing on Ubuntu here are some popular ones.

– Audacity

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

I think the name of this app is self explanatory 🙂 its an utility to split mp3 and ogg files selecting a begin and an end time position, without decoding. It’s very useful to split large mp3/ogg to make smaller files or to split entire albums to obtain original tracks

Video Encoders
Unfortunately this is an area that is still young in Linux. Although there some cools tools that can be used for video editing like Kino,Avidemux,Pitivi,Kdenlive (all in the repositories and can be installed from synaptic) however must are basic tools for simple video editing.

– Kdenlive

Project is quite cool but its crashes a lot (at least from my experience) although there is a new release in the horizon that looks quite promising however as at the time of writing this there is yet to be an Ubuntu package. the older out dated version is in the Ubuntu repository but there are binaries for other versions of Linux can be downloaded here http://www.kdenlive.org/user-manual/downloading-and-installing-packages . and can be installed from synaptic (although i do not recommend it because of its frequent crashes)

– The kdenlive 0.7
Video Editors Unfortunately this is an area that is still young in Linux. Although there some cools tools that can be used for video editing like Kino,Avidemux,Pitivi,Kdenlive (all in the repositories and can be installed from synaptic) however must are basic tools for simple video editing. Kdenlive Project is quite cool but its crashes a lot (at least from my experience) although there is a new release in the horizon that looks quite promising however as at the time of writing this there is yet to be an Ubuntu package. the older out dated version is in the Ubuntu repository but there are binaries for other versions of Linux can be downloaded here http://www.kdenlive.org/user-manual/downloading-and-installing-packages . and can be installed from synaptic (although i do not recommend it because of its frequent crashes)

The Latest kdenlive 0.7

Video Encoding

Once in a while we are always faced with the need to encode video from from format to another. maybe for our ipods or mobile phone . Linux has quite a handful of tools that can be used for video encoding.There is Avidemux which is in the repository and can be installed from synaptic. Cool tool that can be used for everyday audio encoding is WinFF

– WinFF

WinFF is a GUI for the command line video converter, FFMPEG (FFmpeg is a powerful Free and Open source program that can record, convert and stream digital audio and video in numerous formats. It is commandline based). It will convert most any video file that FFmpeg will convert. WinFF does multiple files in multiple formats at one time. You can for example convert mpeg’s, flv’s, and mov’s, all into avi’s all at once. WinFF is available for Windows 95, 98 , ME, NT, XP, VISTA, and Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat based GNU/Linux distributions. WinFF is available in Brazillian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Chinese Traditional, Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish.

Installation

Ubuntu

you need to add a third party repository to your sources.list.
First we had a verification key. open terminal and copy and paste this

They are quite a handful of tools that can be used for Ripping dvds videos from the Disk to your computer. however there are two tools that i find very easy to use and very stable to use. one is more of a DVD backup utility the other is a tool for converters DVD videos to other format.

– K9Copy

K9Copy is a program that allows you to copy DVDs in Linux. It is similar to DVDShrink, and has the following features:

* The video stream is compressed to make the video fit on a 4.7GB recordable DVD
* DVD Burning
* Creation of ISO images
* Choosing which audio and subtitle tracks are copied.
* Title preview (video only)
* The ability to preserve the original menus.

Installation
A deb package can be downloaded from here
Download the Ubuntu package. Double click to install

DVD Authoring

Devede

there are quite a number of tools that can me used to make dvd/vcd videos for home use. out of the lots the best in my opinion is devede. its very easy to use and intuitive. DeVeDe project creates video DVDs, suitables for home players.
DeVeDe can create video DVDs from any number of video files, in any of the formats supported by Mplayer.

The big advantage over other utilites is that it only needs Mplayer, Mencoder, DVDAuthor y MKisofs, so its dependencies are really small.

Devede

Installation

The latest Version of Devede (At blogtime) is available in the in the Intrepid repository so if you are in Ibex just do
sudo apt-get install devede

Zimbra is a Web Client is a full-featured collaboration suite that supports email and group calendars using an Ajax web interface that enables tool tips, draggable items, and right-click menus in the UI. Also included are advanced searching capabilities and date relations. Online document authoring, “Zimlet” mashups and a full administration UI are also included. It is written using the Zimbra Ajax Toolkit.

It exposes a SOAP application programming interface to all its functionality and also is an IMAP and POP3 server. The server runs on many distributions of Linux as well as on Mac OS X.

ZCS is compatible with proprietary clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail, both through proprietary connectors, as well as the open-source Novell Evolution, so that mail, contacts, and calendar items can be synchronised from these to the ZCS server. Zimbra also provides native two-way sync to many mobile devices (Nokia Eseries, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone with 2.0 software).

One thing i love about gmail is its free pop mail service that allows me to use a mail client like Thunderbird to receive and send my emails. However i have an old yahoo account which i still maintain for old contacts sake and it is usually a pain to have to do the traditional web browser thingie just to check my emails.

Along came a Zimbra

Then i stumbled upon zimbra (no pun intended) and my life has been easier. with it i can check my yahoomail without opening Firefox and although its not as integrated has Thunderbird and evolution it still does the job for me.

Installation

Dead easy just make sure that you enble the partner repository by going to System/Administration/Software Sources then go to the Thirdparty Software Tab and Tick/Check the http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ hardy partner repositories.

ubuntu-software-sources-tool

when you are done close the the software tool. it would prompt you to reload.do what it says. when you are done. open synaticSystem/Administration/Synaptic, search for Zimbra right click,install and apply. once installed you will find the program under Application/Internet/Zimbra Desktop Installer . From there its easy just follow the prompt. and provide what ever information its asks email,name etc. when it prompt you if you want an icon on your desktop say yes. once installation is complete. it would sync with your yahoo mail and download all your mails into the program which can be lunched by double clicking its icon on your desktop.

NB this was tested on Ubuntu Hardy Heron. am quite confident that it should work with latter versions of ubuntu. i cant however guarantee or conform if it would work on older ubuntu releases .